The interesting twist to their technology is that method doesn’t use a plant that people typically use for food (like corn, sugarcane or sugar beats). So not only doesn’t this solution use food products, it doesn’t require actual farm land (i.e. land used to grow food) to produce the fuel.

Sapphire claims that they can set up a production facility in the desert. The steady sunlight is an important factor in their production, and the salt water can be shipped in.

Their stated goal is to product 10,000 barrels a day, which in the national economy isn’t that much. It is however, 10,000 barrels a day that isn’t pumped out of the ground, and will be produced domestically.

Keep in mind that introducing a lot of plug in hybrids or pure electric cars into the market is either going to require new sources of power (home based cheap solar and industrial scale Nuclear for example) or some serious inovations in electrical grid management.

What makes Sunvia’s product interesting is that they have made the manufacturing process cheaper. They are squeezing a little more efficiency out of their cells (20%, which is up from the industry standard of 17%), but the cost reduction is the big story.

With Sunvia’s process, electricity from solar power can be produced for 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. That is a competative rate in the United States. Lower costs will result in more solar power being used to generate electricity. More use of solar power on a small scale will also help on a larger utility scale.

Cheaper electric solar panels will result in more individual homes adopting them. The more homes that can power their A/C system from solar during the summer, the less demand there will be on the utility grid during peak hours. Solar panels could be used to charge a set of batteries during the day that would then charge a plug in hybrid car during the night.